Don’t Throw Away That Orange Peel!

If you think that orange peels are only good for throwing away, then this will come as a surprise: they are edible!

After the peels are totally dried out (I usually hang them over my fruit basket for a week or so), put them in a good blender and whirl them around until they become almost powdery. If you only have a small amount of orange peel, then a small coffee grinder will do the job (I have a second coffee grinder that is only used for spices, never for coffee).

dried orange peels

This is what the orange zest powder looks like:

orange zest

The aroma of orange oil smells heavenly and wakes up the senses. I keep the orange zest in a jar in my freezer.

What do you do with it?

You can season meat with it. I rubbed salt, pepper, thyme and orange zest into this beef roast and then slow-baked it in my crock pot.

meat seasoning

Orange zest also spices up cakes, muffins, even breads. This is a rhubarb cake I made tonight with a sprinkling of sugar, butter and orange zest as topping.

rhubarb cake

piece of rhubarb cake

I only save the peels from organically grown oranges. Commercial oranges are heavily sprayed with pesticides, so I would not use their peels for this purpose.

Of course, you can do the same with the skins of lemons and grapefruit and start little jars of lemon zest and grapefruit zest in your freezer. Then experiment with spicing up your cooking and scenting the kitchen with citrus!

The WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge is: Orange.